Making wishes come true since 2004!

I guess this is more of a New Year's wishlist now than a Christmas one, but I got so busy last year I never posted one, and I was determined this year to have enough time to at least mention it.

I must have been difficult for people to get me things this year, because I really don't need anything. I have more clothes than will fit in two dressers AND a closet, I have the basics that I need, my computer still works great, and I have a wonderful fiancé who's actually building me my very own music player software. But I guess I still have a few wishes, so here goes (in reverse order 'cause I saw someone do it and think it looks neat):

10. Although in the past I've usually posted a link to my Amazon.com wishlist, I think it's about time I posted a link to The Original Really Useful Gift Catalog 2009. This is a catalog from ADRA, where instead of buying a present for yourself, you save lives, send children to school, or improve an entire family's welfare by the money you spend. If you've got any extra money you can afford to spend, even as little as $1 can send children to school or pay for hot meals so they can grow and learn.

9. I'd love it if you could recommend me a good book collection manager. I have over a thousand books on shelves in my room and need to keep all the info on them in one place. The program I'm currently using does not have a working method for obtaining book data online using the ISBN (it previously did, but I have more books that need to be entered and manually entering it all is way too slow!). I need one that will, given the book's ISBN, retrieve all the information it can on the book and dump it into a database that I can later browse, search, sort, etc. I'd prefer something on my local computer but an online database would work great too. I can't afford to spend money on it, though, so suggestions for something I can get free would be welcome.

8. Consider adopting a pet from a shelter, particularly a no-kill shelter! If you've already done so, I'd love to hear about your pet. :) Thank you all for your comments and stories below!

7. Relating to #8, we have an older kitten (lovely tabico--very sweet personality) in our house that someone dumped in our neighborhood on Christmas Eve or Day. The poor thing was hungry and cold for several days before a kindhearted neighbor took her in. We went to visit and decided we'd have to try to find a home for her. Currently we haven't found anyone who wants her (I'd love to keep her but not sure that can be managed at our house--we already have two cats and two dogs). My wish is that either we're able to keep her, or that we find a good home for her.A cat rescue lady contacted us, paid for her to get spayed, and found her a wonderful home! :D

6. I wish I had a good mp3 player or mp3 CD player, even. I used to have a great mp3 CD player I took everywhere and played music, but it quit suddenly, and now I don't have any way to play my music in the car so that I'm the only one who hears it--unless I go to all the trouble of booting up a laptop, plugging it into the power converter, and popping a CD into that. So I'd love one that I can use to listen to music on long car trips when I'm not the driver.Thank you, violetxfires!

5. I need a good flash drive, preferably at least 2 gigs. I've got a small one I use to play music in my car (I have a USB port plug-in spot on my car stereo) and a 1 gig that carries documents and stuff--and which I managed to crack the case on, so who knows how long the thing will work. I also don't have one with enough room on it to put a movie on (if they're the double CD size), or anything, and that would be handy.

4. I would love it if someone would give me some credits on PaperbackSwap: I would LOVE to be able to request a bunch of books that I've been wanting! I'm currently hoarding my tiny few trying to decide which books to get and which to give up on getting. A few more credits would give me the freedom to get a few without constantly reviewing my choices and wishing I'd gotten something else.

3. If you're a fan of the X-Men movieverse, and you dabble in writing, I'd love it if you wrote me a fanfic! I would love either a Scott/Ororo or Scott/Rogue fic, mainly because those are incredibly rare yet there's so much possibility to those ships.

2. I wish I had the opportunity to get training in the Lindamood-Bell method of reading remediation. I have heard from multiple sources that it is truly effective, and I would love to be able to start making a difference with struggling readers.

1. Any help you can give me on my latest project. I'm creating a curriculum to teach reading to children, starting with the basics of learning to read. It's based on synthetic phonics because that is the only 100% effective method. I'm going to be releasing it under a Creative Commons license so that it's free for everyone to obtain, use, even tweak and re-release as they like. But I need help, in the way of people who can draw pictures (I have to use public domain line drawings for illustrations, and clker.com doesn't have everything I'd like to be able to use), teachers/tutors who are willing and able to test this on young children or remedial students (the part I'm working on currently is the very first level, for those who can't read anything), and anyone who can find said people to help me out with this. I'll be happy to give you more info on the project or the philosophy/method if you're interested. I'm a teacher, and I just can't stand seeing how much illiteracy we allow in schools here in the US, and I want to do this to help correct that, plus provide a program that can be used across the world in English-speaking classrooms.

You're welcome to either leave a comment here, or e-mail me (you can find my e-mail as a graphic--for spam prevention--on my website, which is linked to from my LJ). Merry belated Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! :)

Yeah, unfortunately I'm out in Washington state. Or maybe I should say, unfortunately, you're not near me, lol. (I like the weather here too much to move. *g*) If I had more time I'd go volunteer somewhere around here. I'm considering doing that on Saturday afternoons, though--it's one time I might be able to. I don't know what shelters are in my area, any suggestions for where to go looking? Also, do you know if shelters tend to require a specific time schedule that you always will come, or are you free to come as you have the time? (It's not that I'd randomly drop in, but I couldn't commit to being there every week because we end up doing family stuff every now and then that would be right during that only bit of free time.)

Hmm, I tried to find the raccoons and owls and stuff, but the beasties category itself didn't have any pics under it, just other categories. Did I miss clicking on the right link?

The shelters should be listed in the telephone directory...or call local vets...they'd know. Most shelters are *thrilled* that someone wants to come in to help out. We don't require any time committment...*any* time someone can stop by is great with us. We don't even get upset if someone had told us they're coming in and they don't show. Things happen...As for the pix, the skunks, etc. are in those categories shown under beasties. It all about those dumb "folder" type organizing.